


Those Moments

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 12:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2269035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I sat down to write some serious hurt/comfort angst, and all that came out was crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Moments

The texts said—if he’d read them right—that if you meditated long enough, and deeply enough, you could drop, somehow, through visible reality, sink into a different place, where the world was a quantum mesh of possibilitiess.  You could, the texts hinted, glimpse into the future, the possible futures, taste the possibilities and maybe, if you were wise and good, you could push the probabilities, alter something small that might alter destiny.

You could follow the lines of light, like threads, stitching into a future. If you could only try hard enough.

That's what they said, anyway.

Drift sure wasn’t wise, and maybe not good, but he hoped Primus would give him extra credit for effort. The shuttle wasn’t made for long-range travel, so he’d had to jump, from system to system, setting down on a planet or moon, or resting in an orbit, collecting solar charge, gathering energy, gathering will, for the next step.

He'd been trying to meditate, to get to that divine, sacred level, every day since his exile, almost desperate with worry about his former crew.  They had sent him away, but he still...he still cared.  It had to be that way, and sometimes in life hard choices had to be made.

He hadn't counted on worrying quite so much, on the way not-knowing ate into his peace of mind, until his peace of mind was a little crumb. Drift tried, because he wanted to see, just to know, that everything was going to work out all right.  That his sacrifice was worth something.  

He ex-vented, sucking in air to cool his engine, letting his optics dim. Sometimes--not often--he missed the lowlight red of his old optics, but by this point he knew every inch of the shuttle so well he could navigate it blindfolded, backwards and on his hands.

He'd tried.  

Because boredom did that to you.

And there was really nothing to miss about those days, those old Rodion days, not like the slivers he had, at least, of happiness he'd found with the Autobots--Perceptor, who understood what it was like to feel you were always on the outside looking in, and Rodimus, the first mech who treated him like his past made him 'cool', instead of dubious, Kup, who’d given him a chance.  He could see them now, still, their faces clear and crisp: Perceptor's flat smile, as if he was afraid to show he was too happy, then Rodimus's easy, cocksure grin.  And others floating fondly in a hazier bubble of recollection--Swerve, with his prying questions, asking to see his spark chamber to see if it was true that Decepticons formed their insignia from metal taken from the spark chamber, and Rung, who seemed so gentle Drift couldn't figure out how he survived the war, and Whirl--

Okay, he didn't miss Whirl.  He wasn't that far gone....yet.  The thought that one day he might was chilling. 

But Ratchet. He...really missed Ratchet. He'd tried to say it, then, because it had been bubbling under the surface for so long, but he'd fumbled the words--he'd never been good with impromptu words--and even then, what was the point? It would only have hurt more to have a glimmer of promise and light, and have to turn away from it.  And it was unfair to Ratchet, to lay that burden of his affection at his feet.  

He'd give just about anything right now to hear Ratchet's voice, even yelling at him, deriding him as a 'flaky spiritualist' or telling him his hand language had a funny accent.

Drift could never figure that one out. How do your fingers...?

"Fraggin' blasthole!"  

The words jolted him from his meditation, so hard that his head whanged against the shuttle's sidewall.  

It wasn't just the words, it was the voice.  

It was...Ratchet's voice?

But he'd set down on this moon a few days ago, to let his shuttle's solar batteries recharge.  And here?  Was pretty damn far from where the Lost Light had been headed.  

"Get off me or I'll give you something to be ugly about!"

....only Ratchet would be that bad at combat repartee. Drift's hands were already drawing his swords as he hit the ramp, bolting down the grating to the rocky ground.  

It didn't take him long to find him. Just, really, a matter of following the sound of the yelling through the heavy scrub that surrounded the small clearing Drift had set down in.  

And any last doubt he might have had was blasted to smithereens. That sure was Ratchet, who had run afoul of one of the local plants, whose petals were grabbing at him with pastel tentacles.  Grabbing at him in...yeah, well, Drift might be yelling, too.  That sure wasn’t a place you wanted strangers to touch you. Though he honestly didn’t think Ratchet was that, well, squirmy.

“Don’t make me have to use this on you, you overgrown fraggin’ bouquet!” Ratchet wielded a wrench, attempting to brandish it menacingly over his head.  Which kind of failed when one of the petal tentacles--petacles?--snaked its way up his thigh, poking in his hip socket, leaving a trail of bright pollen. It was probably, Drift thought, more like a stamen, a little thumb-like thing, poking and prodding. Ratchet squeaked, a sound that might have been kind of hot under, you know, other circumstances (namely with 100% less carnivorous and slightly perverted plantlife and with 50% more slightly perverted ex-Decepticon). The plant wiggled Ratchet around, the probing petal wriggling against his leg, lifting him up so that he hung upside down. Which was, yeah, distracting in a suspension bondage kind of kinky hot way. "DRIFT!" 

Drift twitched, caught out.  "Ratchet?"

"Are you going to help or are you just going to stand there and watch me get molested by this," he paused to slap another petal away from his chassis, "salad bar?"

"I have a choice?" Well, honestly.... And why wasn't 'both' an option? 

"No, you don't have a choice. To think I came halfway across the fraggin' galaxy to find y---yeah, never mind." Ratchet's mouth snapped shut into a frown.

"You came looking for me?" For me?  Ratchet?  Came looking? For me?  He felt a wriggling in his own belly, at that, the kind of thing he probably needed a few days of meditation to unpack.

"Yeah, I came looking for you, all right?  Maybe I figured you'd get your stupid aft in trouble."  The scowl, upside down, still looked like a scowl.  'Turning your frown upside down' maybe worked for humans, but not, apparently, for Cybertronians. 

"I. I don't know what to say."  Story of his life. 

"Can you maybe _do_ something, here? About this?" His wrench-carrying hand flailed at the flower. 

Right. Plant first, then talking. Maybe by then Drift would figure out something good to say. Maybe. He wasn't going to bet on it.

But he'd been here long enough to know how to handle the local fauna. And flora. It was just the matter of smacking the back of a sword hilt into the bulbous, spongy base of the plant to convince it to let go.  Drift stepped in, managing to catch Ratchet as the plant dropped him, the powerful pistons in his thighs rocking to take the weight across his arms, holding Ratchet like a bride.  In any other circumstance, it would probably be kind of romantic, especially since Ratchet's body was still warm, his EM field raspy and tingly from the plant's naughty touches.  Right.  Those right words could come...any time now.  This was definitely a Moment, and Drift could feel the opportunity slipping away, maybe like that whole fabric of space time possibilities and destiny sliding out form under him. 

"You can put me down," Ratchet said, grumpily, folding his arms, wrench and all, over his chassis. 

No. Nooooo, the moment was slipping away even faster. "M-maybe I don't want to," Drift said, lamely.  Because he wanted to hold onto this moment forever, and it really wasn't till he felt Ratchet's armor against him that it hit him, like a hammer to his spark, how lonely he'd been, how his meditations and imaginings were just attempts to fill this unfillable void in him. 

"Maybe that wasn't a request," Ratchet said. 

Oh.  Well. Drift tilted down, reluctantly, letting Ratchet's feet touch the ground.  "Sorry. It's just....good to see you."  It had been even better to touch him, really, and Drift could feel his armor cooling from the warm print of Ratchet's body across his arms, his chassis. 

"Yeah, you too," Ratchet said, making a show of checking himself over, bending down to blow pollen out of a knee joint in a bright yellow puff. Wow, that thing had really gotten in there.   "This just wasn't the, you know, reunion theme I was after."

Well, Drift could relate. He'd sort of failed at heroic rescue, himself, though heroic rescue against a pollinating plant didn't seem very...heroic. "We could have a do-over?"

"A do-over."  Ratchet shook his head, then. "Sure, why not.  Wouldn't be the craziest thing you've ever suggested."

Truth. "I'll just, you know, go over here and close my eyes and you can start the scene however you want."  Drift moved back to the edge of the clearing, squeezing his optics shut. Do over.  Do over. Get it right this time, get it perfect, for all the times he couldn't have a do-over. For all the times he wished he could have said or done different things and...didn't.  He felt something like tears sting his optic shutters, trying not to feel how often he'd said or done the wrong thing, the bad thing, however good his intent and--

\--and he felt fingers on his jaw, tipping his face up, and then a mouth, gentle, on his, the lip plates satiny and warm, and an EM field, still flaring, but plush like velvet, against him.  Drift kept his optics closed, in case this was just some sort of really realistic meditation or something, in which case, a hell of a time for it, right?, and the kiss continued, pushing at his mouthplates, glossa seeking his, and he could taste, in the kiss, all the longing and loneliness that he thought was his alone.

Drift let his optics open, then, just a crack, to see, to try to record this moment across all of his senses--touch and taste and smell and sight, too--and saw the slice of a chevron against the dapple-green of the leaf canopy overhead, even as he felt a hand slide around his waist, Ratchet's hand, real and supple and alive, against the small of his back, fingertips just trailing at the border of his hip frame.  He sighed--he couldn't help it--at the sudden rush of pleasure, a sound of hope and happiness returning. 

Ratchet pulled away from the kiss, slowly, letting his mouthplates linger over Drift's for a moment, as though savoring the taste of all of this himself, before his optics unlidded, for a rare moment open and unguarded. And there was another Moment rising, here, when Drift could say the right thing and secure happiness, or the wrong thing, and screw everything up.  He didn't have such a great track record.

Well, Drift.  Try the truth. Don't try to be clever or funny or spiritual or the mech you want to be. Be who you are, and say what you feel. Maybe...maybe that's enough. "I missed you," he said, half surprised at the words that came out of his mouth--the weight of truth, and the simple obviousness of it.  And even then, it was an understatement or something way beyond understatement, like a mega super understatement: Ratchet had been there from the start, knew him through all of it, good and bad, and yet he'd...come. Alone, endangering himself, to try to find Drift. 

"Yeah," Ratchet responded, stepping back, his hands holding Drift's face, cupping it in his palms around Drift's cheeks.  And the word said nothing and everything, and it was everything Drift could want to hear, and Ratchet was still smeared with pollen and Drift was still...Drift, but this moment was perfect and beautiful and everything, even Drift himself, was enough.

 


End file.
